Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

CTC I don't prep for anything specific I figure that if I just have around me things I can use to keep us warm, feed us and keep us safe and medicines enough to deal with commonplace conditions than I'm ahead of the game. Life is an uncertain thing at the best of times and no one ever knows what today will bring let alone tomorrow so I just do the best I can to stay safe, keep us safe, try to be on as good terms as I can with my fellow villagers and keep what I have got by way of preps entirely private and out of sight and mind. That's maybe a little selfish but if people don't know they won't think of us first if a SHTF situation kicks off here.

I can't change fate or world happenings but I can try to have around us things that are going to help in many scenarios and have aquired relevant skills over the years that are going to be invaluable if we ever have to sort out life after there has been a significant problem period. I guess in all things you can only do the best you can and hope that will be enough!!!

Doveling

I can second the solar lamps from Ikea. They are great but I also like the wind up lanterns which we have always used for camping. After reading the thread this am I have just ordered another two!
Last year, I bought a wind up lantern for my mother as she lives in a village prone to power cuts in bad weather. I asked her yesterday if it was where she could lay her hands on it in the event of power shortages as I don't like the idea of her messing with candles. Her reply was that "they" wouldn't let that happen.
I'm afraid I don't have as much faith as she does.
Also, beginning to think my food stores aren't sufficient- I just hold enough for a month in advance for three of us.
Can anyone recommend a can crusher for minimising waste?

Frugalsod

vivatifosi wrote: »

I can remember hearing about the airport being taken over by militants, it was on Sky News a while back. IIRC (and I'm not certain) they said that the planes had been extensively damaged in the fighting. So the militias would need plane repairing skills (that extend for example to holes in the fuselage) to get them airworthy.

Even if - worst case scenario - they got in the air under hostile control, I think that they would be shot down over the Med. Same with MH370... obviously evidence now suggests that it took the southern route, but if it had taken the northern and taken off again, I think that would have been shot down too.

I think that the militants captured Tripoli Airport but destroyed dozens of aircraft so they could be confusing these aircraft and speculating that they will be used for suicide attacks.

moneyistooshorttomention

Crushing cans to minimise size of them is a useful thought, though personally I'd use my size 5's (aka two feet with my weight firmly on them) and reckon that should do the trick.

Re cooking, not having an upstairs, I'd do so in my bedroom or study, as those are rooms no-one else has any excuse to go into. Visitors do go into the bathroom, kitchen and lounge.

It does feel a little selfish, I agree, to keep prepping to yourself. I know I feel a bit that way, but a dose of just walking down the street reminds me not to feel too bad about that, because any reasonable length trip out will reveal numerous examples of other peoples selfishness pretty darn quickly. Hence I tend to think "If so many people regard it as acceptable to do x/y/z selfish thing I wouldn't dream of doing, on an everyday basis, then I'm not going to feel too bad about prepping".

1Tonsil

GreyQueen wrote: »

CTC, I think that's just talk.

Russia and Ukraine are side-by-side. It'd be like bombing yourself in terms of radiation. I don't think Putin is a stupid man. Vile, but not stupid. I think the Ukrainians are trying to whip the west into fighting Russia on their behalf and that this is part of that strategy.

A nuke in Ukraine would impact Russia itself, plus other countries around the Black Sea. I'd regard that as a herring rouge, so to speak.

They have just agreed a permanent ceasefire this morning between Russia and the Ukraine. There is so much propoganda on the western news stations that I have turned them off and will not be returning to watching them.

Meanwhile we are in ''the eye of the storm'' and it is sunny with a lovely blue sky at the moment, although every horizon has storm clouds no matter which direction you look. Went to bed early so we could sleep before the storms hit us.....but fortunately I could only hear the thunder in the distance. Unfortunately we were woken up by someone making a lot of noise outside and we thought they were stealing our new shutters, so went out on the balcony to have a birds eye view of the culprits.:eek:

It turns out they were doing a moonlight flit......something I have heard of, but never seen before in action. But even I would have had the forethought to dismantle the full sized wooden cot instead of trying to squeeze it into a small hatch back car.:rotfl:

1Tonsil

Authorities in Kazakhstan are on high alert after a container holding the highly radioactive and dangerous substance caesium-137 disappeared in the west of the country, police said on Tuesday. A police spokesman for the Mangistau region said the material used for medical purposes and also a by-product of nuclear explosions and reactors appeared to have fallen off a vehicle transporting it. "The container with the radioactive isotope caesium-137 has not been found so far," police spokesman Azamat Sarsenbayev said, adding that authorities discovered it had gone missing last Wednesday. Exposure to caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, can result in severe burns or even death, and locals have been warned not to open the container if they find it. The country's security services, emergency response workers and the military have been involved in efforts to find the container, which weighs some 50-60 kilogrammes. The origin of the missing material was not revealed by authorities in Kazakhstan, which inherited nuclear warheads and a weapons test site when the Soviet Union collapsed. The UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to which such incidents are normally reported, had no immediate comment to make on Tuesday. Caesium-137 is just one of many radioactive substances used in hospitals, universities and industry worldwide. Others include iridium-192, americium-241 used in smoke detectors and cobalt-60. Every year dozens of cases of loss, theft or unauthorised activity are reported to the IAEA, and there have been numerous incidents of these substances causing serious illness and fatalities. But the big worry is that extremists could get hold of the materials and use them in a "dirty bomb" a device whereby conventional explosives disperse radioactive materials. Although the damage and loss of life caused by such a "dirty bomb" would be a fraction of that unleashed by a fission or fusion atom bomb, it could still cause mass panic in an urban area.


Scary or what.....it fell off the back of the lorry.....and it has taken them a week to mention it to the world?

daz378

i thinks its very difficult to prepp for total sociatal breakdown, because the former policeman/soldiers would become militias , they would go for obvious targets first... but would eventually get round to most people and take what they wanted.... you would have to be super prepper and very lucky to avoid trouble for any length of time....... i tend to prep for personal SHTF situations..... you do what you can

COOLTRIKERCHICK

flipping heck 1Tonsil, as you said it took them a week to realease that news...


the world is getting a scarier place by the minute...

thriftwizard

Oh dear Heaven, you could cause a whole LOT of mischief with a container-full of Caesium-137. It's not that big when it comes to hiding it, either; that container weighs somewhat less than I do. Here's hoping it's in the hands of some poor unfortunate tribespeople, rather than those of someone bent on real trouble.

GreyQueen

Afternoon all.

CTC, you'd be surprised what you can get used to, regarding your neighbourhood. Shoebox Towers, under its RL handle, is notorious among Police clean across the region. It's level of criminal activity goes up and down, and a few bad apples can weight it heavily to the down side, but it can be peaceful for weeks on end, and often is.

In the years I've spent living here, I've acquired a degree of intel about the neighbours from both personal observation and from SG (who has been here since the place was built). If I relocated I wouldn't have that degree of knowledge of any other neighbourhood I pitched up in.

You never completely relax at the Towers, in terms of expecting that things will always be peaceful and safe. Some - many- might be appalled at the prospect, but I don't regard it as a total negative.

Because it's prudent to keep your eyes open and your wits about you, you just do it automatically. You don't assume that people around you are benign, honest or stable. Some are, some aren't. So you're less likely to be surprised when something untoward happens.

Many people are fixated on the idea of safe places, as in moving out to the proverbial country cottage down a lane somewhere. You can get murdered or suffer a home invasion just about anywhere, but out in the sticks you are a long way from help, whether law enforcement or urgent medical attention. Here, if something goes bump or crash or someone screams in the night, people come shooting out of flats to check it out and the Police are here very quickly, sometimes in a couple of minutes, or even less. They also cruise around the neighbourhood in the middle of the night several times a night, just to keep an eye on things.

There are a lot of people awake during the night, as tea leaves attempting to rob cars on a carpark have found when our eyes-in-the-skies have spotted them from the upper floors and called the Polis to nab them. And when a woman was assaulted outside the block a few years ago, no end of the neighbours came out at a run to help and chased the !!!!!! off.

So, because we are all in the same boat, in identical tiny flats, and no one is wealthy (or you'd move) there is a degree of homogenity which promotes social cohesion of a rough and ready sort. I think we'd fare handily in a crisis, because there are peeps down here who wouldn't take any carp and would be happy to dish it out, should it come knocking.